A
formative experience for me earlier in my career was collaborating
with two professors from Georgia Tech who had similar technical
interests. Both of these professors are Muslim — one from
Egypt, one from Iran.
One
night at dinner, the topic of religion came up. One of them, a highly
educated and widely respected man of great intelligence, told me of
his love for the Koran, for the unearthly beauty of its language and
the power of the text to enlighten and inspire. We could understand
one another, I felt, because we both had experienced the power of a
sacred text.
I
would later spend more time with one of them, staying overnight with
his family and seeing a faithful Muslim family in their interactions
with each other. I saw so much of what we Latter-day Saints aspire
to: love and kindness, respect between husband and wife (a highly
educated woman in this case, also with a Ph.D., as I recall), family
fun together, and, yes, good food.
Of
course I know there are severe problems in parts of the Muslim world
and some movements and trends that are disappointing to many of us,
including many devout Muslims, just are there are problems and
disappointments in our own faith and in Christendom in general. But I
saw abundant evidence that intelligent, talented, loving, happy,
tolerant, peace-loving people can be faithful Muslims.
There
are some who would ask how any intelligent person could possibly be
Muslim. A better question is to ask intelligent Muslims what their
faith means to them. There's much to learn and appreciate. We don't
have to accept it and agree with it, but there's benefit in
understanding.
There
are intelligent Muslims who sincerely wonder how any intelligent
person could possibly be Christian. After all, the idea of God being
born as a baby boy and then allowing Himself to be killed can just
seem crazy at first blush, and the idea of God asking us to ritually
drink his blood and eat his flesh might even seem offensive to some.
Isn't that all just a little bizarre and backward? So it can seem. I
hope they will ask us to explain and seek to understand, not just
condemn.
I
have the same hope for our Christian peers who are outraged at what
they think they know of Mormonism. How can Mormons be so stupid?
Instead, I hope they'll ask us in order to understand what our faith
means and why we find so much intellectual beauty in LDS theology and
so much joy in our faith. (I'm not necessarily including bishopric or
ward council meetings in the "joy" part.)
One
of the things I really like about The Book of Mormon is its
condemnation of anger and its teachings that lead to charity and
peace. When the Resurrected Lord visits the Nephites in 3 Nephi 11,
for example, one of the first teachings out of His mouth was
condemning the anger and contention they had among themselves in
their disputations over religious doctrine.
The
spirit of contention is not of God, He explained, and it is Satan who
stirs up the hearts of men to anger against one another. Those who do
the mocking in The Book of Mormon, those who give in to anger and
hate, whether "religious" Nephites or apostates or
Lamanites, are always on the wrong side.
At the request of
someone else, I recently visited a place I prefer to avoid. I call it
the Great and Spacious Website (one of several, actually) where the
anti-Mormon animosity is similar to that shown in Lehi's vision
involving a great and spacious building. The anger and bitterness
that some people express toward the Church and toward its defenders
can be rather breathtaking. The tone of smarmy anger may be viewed as
confident discussion of the truth by some, I'm sure, but it was
disappointing.
On
a particular topic of minor importance, I engaged in dialog for a few
rounds, just long enough to get a fierce dose of accusations and list
of all things wrong with Mormonism, followed by the thread being
swiftly shut down before I could reply any further. The party line
that dominates the Great and Spacious Website and its cousins is that
Mormonism is laughably ridiculous and the only way someone can defend
it is to be a depraved liar, deliberately deceptive and knowingly
blind. Mockery and contempt are the only worthy attitudes a
reasonable person can have against so foul and disgusting a religion.
Yes,
we have a ridiculous religion — from the world's perspective.
If you don't believe in God, the First Vision story is appalling. If
you don't have faith to accept the idea of angels, then the whole
story of The Book of Mormon only makes sense as obvious fraud. And if
you begin with a "sure knowledge" that Joseph Smith was a
criminal perpetrating fraud, then the way we resolve all sorts of
conflicting testimony and evidence about his life will surely only
further confirm the negative and leave one wondering how anyone short
of being brain dead could possibly be Mormon, much less a serious,
faithful Mormon.
But
that approach misses the real questions that people should be asking,
questions if asked sincerely could lead to understanding, perhaps
even a touch of respect, and in some cases, much more.
Sadly,
some Latter-day Saints make similar mistakes in their zeal. There are
religions and doctrines of others that seem far removed from the
Truth as we think we know it, and it's easy to view those foreign
perspectives as silly. It's easy to mock. This takes almost no mental
effort and certainly no imagination.
There
is something much more difficult, though, and actually much more
elevating. Rather than mocking, what if we sought to understand? What
if we imagined that some of those who disagree with us aren't
mindless robots or cesspools of deception, but might have a somewhat
self-consistent framework for their viewpoints that doesn't require a
frontal lobotomy? What if we imagined that they were intelligent
people trying to find and understand truth, just like us? What if we
asked them what they think and why, not to expose their stupidity,
but to understand?
I'm
not calling for relativism or saying that every religion and
philosophy is valid. But there is good in every religion and beauty
that we can learn from. There is intelligence in almost every
religion and intelligent believers that might have something we can
learn from.
To
have charity, the pure love of Christ, for those who disagree with us
and have strongly different religious views, a vital and often
missing element is imagination. We need to imagine that our opponents
are, in most cases, not just trying to be evil, that they haven't
sold their souls or surrendered their mind to a cult.
We
need to imagine that those who disagree with us, whether religiously
or politically, might be just as intelligent as we are and trying
just as hard to be good and to do good. So what do they see that we
don't? How do they resolve the challenges they face? Why not imagine
that there is something there, then ask and understand?
This
attitude can save souls. I think of those in the Church who sharply
disagree with some position the Church has taken or some action of
its leaders. It is easy to mock. That takes no imagination at all.
The wiser approach, the more charitable and imaginative one, is to
ask, "What do they see? Is there something I'm missing? Is the
problem, perhaps, me and my lack of understanding? Is it possible
that those men are good men trying to do what's right? Is it even
possible that God doesn't see things my way?"
To
at least enter into this inquiry can lead to surprising results. We
may continue to disagree, but if we can resist the temptation to
think of those we disagree with as morons and throwbacks, we may be
able to hold onto the iron rod that brings us to the tree of life in
spite of the mists of darkness — or, more often, the "miffs
of darkness" that block our vision along the way.
This
attitude can also help us rescue others or be more Christlike in
dealing with them. Those who struggle in their faith and become
inactive or even leave the Church may have entirely valid, sincere
reasons from their perspective, and brushing them off as ridiculous
or disgusting can intensify wounds when healing or at least
compassion might have been possible.
Those
who choose to leave still deserve kindness, and if they are family
members, they still deserve our love and our time and respect. Alma
the Elder’s patient love for his “anti-Mormon” son
is a good example, as is Alma the Younger’s love for his
rebellious son Corianton.
And
note that when Alma has a long talk with fallen Corianton in Alma
39-42, he doesn’t just brush off the intellectual objections
his son had been having with the Gospel. Instead, he gets into the
details and provides a thorough logical analysis to help that son
intellectually understand the fairness and mercy of God.
It
could have been easy for Alma to say, “Well, you’ve been
immoral. That’s the real problem here. These intellectual
arguments of yours are just excuses for your problem with women.
Shape up, kid, and pray about it you have any questions.” No,
Alma accepted his sons concerns as legitimate and spent a great deal
of time preparing a reasoned response. And through that combination
of love and logic, he helped rescue Corianton’s soul. Alma has
the imagination to see the reality of Corianton’s worries and
the need to address them.
Note
that Alma’s love for his son was not expressed as acceptance of
bad behavior. It led to a firm call to repentance and teaching truth.
But it was an expression of his imaginative ability to look past
superficial stereotypes and see Corianton as a complex person with
genuine intellectual needs that needed attention.
I
think that healthy imagination is tied to charity. The greatest
challenge for our imagination, though, is contemplating and grasping
the love of Christ. This is transformative imagination, imagination
that opens us to a reality that changes everything, most especially
us.
Can
you imagine that Christ actually knows and loves you, and suffered
for you? Can you imagine that He wants to bring you joy and peace?
Can you imagine returning to His presence and being swallowed up in
the joy of God?
Alma’s
sermon in Alma 5 is an appeal to imagination, looking to the future
and imagining our readiness to stand before God, with outcomes
dependent on our relationship with Christ. It is interesting that at
the end of Moroni 7, when Moroni completes his discussion of charity,
that he also calls us to imagine that time when Christ returns, and
to consider that if we receive God’s miraculous gift of
charity, then “when he shall appear, we shall be like him….that
we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure.”
Jeff Lindsay has been defending the Church on the Internet since 1994, when he launched his
LDSFAQ website under JeffLindsay.com. He has also long been blogging about LDS matters on
the blog Mormanity (mormanity.blogspot.com). Jeff is a longtime resident of Appleton,
Wisconsin, who recently moved to Shanghai, China, with his wife, Kendra.
He works for an Asian corporation as head of intellectual property. Jeff and Kendra are the parents of 4 boys, 3 married and the the youngest on a mission.
He is a former innovation and IP consultant, a former professor, and former Corporate Patent
Strategist and Senior Research Fellow for a multinational corporation.
Jeff Lindsay, Cheryl Perkins and Mukund Karanjikar are authors of the book Conquering
Innovation Fatigue (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
Jeff has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Brigham Young University and is a registered US
patent agent. He has more than 100 granted US patents and is author of numerous publications.
Jeff's hobbies include photography, amateur magic, writing, and Mandarin Chinese.